I am truly obliged to you for thinking of me in Pernambuco. The manuscript [1] has arrived, and will be very useful to me, the more so, as Rocha Pitta takes the other side in his account,
and omits, as he usually does, the most important points. [2] The better I become acquainted with colonial history, the more clearly I perceive the
natural tendency of all colonies toward Republicanism.

My second volume [3] is
advancing in the press, and I hope to publish it in the course of the winter.

Can you tell me if the Bernardo Vieira [4] of your manuscript be of the family of João Fernandes Vieira, [5] the Restorer of Pernambuco? I have not been able to discover how
J. Fernandes was rewarded for his services, farther than that he was made Governor of Angola, which seems very much like putting him out of the way. I have another question to ask
which you can probably answer. Are the negroes of the Palmares [6] extirpated, or have you still in the interior of Pernambuco, as of Surinam, [7] communities of maroons, existing, in a state of something between savages and banditti? The map shows that the interior of that Captaincy is
less peopled than any other part of Brazil.

[1] ‘Guerra Civil ou Sedissoens de Pernambuco
Exemplo Memoravel aos vindouros 1710’, no. 3840 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. This was an account of the Mascate War (or ‘War of the Peddlers’) in Pernambuco,
Brazil in 1710–1711. The war was a conflict between landowners based around Olinda and merchants in Recife (backed by the colonial government). The landowners’ leaders were the
first to call for Brazil to become an independent Republic. BACK

[3] History of Brazil (1810–1819). The second volume was not published until 1817. BACK

[4] Bernardo Vieira de Melo (1658–1718), Captain-General of Rio Grande do Norte and
leader of the rebel landowners in Pernambuco in 1710–1711. BACK

[5] Joao
Fernandes Vieira (c. 1613–1681), leader of the Brazilian forces against the Dutch in Pernambuco 1645–1654. He became Captain-General of Paraiba (1655–1657), Captain-General of
Angola (1658–1661) and finally took command of all fortifications in North Eastern Brazil (1661–1681). BACK

[6] The Quilombo dos Palmares was a community of escaped slaves in the
interior of Pernambuco from 1605 until its destruction in 1694. BACK

[7] As famously described in John Gabriel Stedman (1744–1797; DNB), Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of
Surinam (1796). BACK